Spring Trail

Today we had a meeting with Mother Nature. Although in a very small domain of the beautiful Pune University Campus, it was one to reckon with. The meeting was scheduled at 06:30 in the morning which no doubt was quite early for most of us. The meeting was arranged by V. G. Bhide Science centre. I have quite a good number of friends there and was looking forward to the walk down the nature lane. When at 06:20, Sanjeev knocked my door he was very surprised in finding me ready to go.
We started the trail from the Main Building. The trail had evoked a nice response and there were students from various departments. Two students, Shraddha from MSc Microbiology and Devyani from MSc Geomorphology, S. P. College were to be our resource persons. They were to be helped by the twins, Siddharth and Harshvardhan, Pankaj and few others. I basically can’t even distinguish between a raven and cuckoo or for that matter am not sure about most of the trees. One tree I am sure about is the Banyan tree which I hope is no big deal to boast about.
The entourage was distributed into two groups one to be headed by Shraddha and the other by Devyani. I was in the group headed by Devyani and whatever would be written below will be about this group only. The chief instructors in our group were Devyani and Harshavardhan. They meticulously showed us the flora and fauna and answered our queries to the fullest. They were ably supported by Pankaj and Aradhana.
Earlier I had never recognized the biodiversity around and wasn’t aware about the rich bio- heritage of the Campus. Today I came to know a few unknown facts like Gulmohar is actually a colonial tree and there are spiders which live in colonies. And the fact that any biological name having ‘indica’ is an indigenous breed of India had never crossed my mind before. We saw a lot of insects and were reminded about their contribution to the biosphere and there necessity in the Food-Chain.
Our trip ended in the Alice garden where we saw quite a few exotic and indigenous trees and came to know some informative facts about spiders, Hornbills and the Madagascar tree which is actually from tropical America. I hope this programme will help to strengthen our bond with Mother Nature and increase general awareness among us which will eventually lead us to understand the grievous danger that nature is facing currently and the contribution needed from each one of us in preservation and protection of nature.

Here is the Green pledge that we undertook:
“Vasundhara is my mother Earth. I dream that coming generations will live in unpolluted
environment. To fulfill this dream, I will lead by example. I will reduce the usage of natural resources and recycle them for the future.”
I am going to act on my pledge and encourage others as well and expect that from you as well.
PRESERVE!!! PROTECT!!! SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!!!

P.S. You can have a look at the photographs of the trail at the following link:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/subhasishchandra/SpringTrail#